Michael White's political briefing + Trade unions | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/series/politicalbriefing+tradeunions
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Strikes are inconvenient but unions must be defended | Michael Whitehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/24/tube-strike-inconvenient-unions-defend
<p>With tax-dodging coffee chains and tip-pinching restaurants, I know why I’d prefer Unite’s Len McCluskey as a neighbour to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos</p><p>Rail passengers in the West Country have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-34026450">suffering weekend disruption</a> because of a rare strike over job security and conditions by union staff on First Great Western. I’m sure it’s very annoying and inconvenient, as it will be in London if transport unions <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/24/talks-scheduled-in-attempt-to-avert-tube-strike">again disrupt the Tube system over the promised 24/7 all-night service</a>.</p><p>Are these strikes justified either in the public interest (staffing levels and safety?) or because intransigent and inept management have left the workers with no choice but a show of muscle? It’s never easy to say from the outside, but right is rarely the monopoly of either side.</p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/15/trade-unions-conservative-offensive-decades-strikes-labour">Biggest crackdown on trade unions for 30 years launched by Conservatives</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/23/amazon-jeff-bezos-workers-rights-capitalism-employment-law">Once, firms cherished their workers. Now they are seen as disposable | Will Hutton</a> </p><p> <span>Related: </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/15/sajid-javid-what-thatcherite-union-buster-learned-from-wall-street">What Thatcherite union buster Sajid Javid learned on Wall Street</a> </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/24/tube-strike-inconvenient-unions-defend">Continue reading...</a>Trade unionsPoliticsSajid JavidUK newsMon, 24 Aug 2015 13:23:18 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/24/tube-strike-inconvenient-unions-defendPhotograph: Anthony Devlin/PAPhotograph: Anthony Devlin/PAMichael White2015-08-24T13:23:18ZTime for Ed Miliband and the unions to kiss and make up | Michael Whitehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jan/17/time-miliband-unions-kiss-make-up
The squabble between the Labour leader and the unions resurrects a fine tradition that has existed for a century<p>When Len McCluskey of the giant Unite trade union weighed into Ed Miliband and Ed Balls over their modest recalibration of Labour's economic policy he was embracing a fine old tradition which has existed for most of the century of their co-existence: feuding in public between Labour and the TUC.</p><p>Sometimes the squabble is heartfelt on one side or on both. On other occasions it is driven by constituency necessity, when union members on one side or voters on the other expect a display of aggravation on their behalf.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jan/17/time-miliband-unions-kiss-make-up">Continue reading...</a>Trade unionsPoliticsEd MilibandUniteLabourTue, 17 Jan 2012 18:03:14 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jan/17/time-miliband-unions-kiss-make-upPhotograph: Linda Nylind/GuardianMiliband angered unions by saying Labour cannot promise to reverse cuts and lift pay freezes at an unknown future date when conditions may have made recovery much harder.
Photograph: Linda Nylind for the GuardianPhotograph: Linda Nylind/GuardianMiliband angered unions by saying Labour cannot promise to reverse cuts and lift pay freezes at an unknown future date when conditions may have made recovery much harder.
Photograph: Linda Nylind for the GuardianMichael White2012-01-17T18:03:14ZUnions cannot afford tactical errors in fight against coalition's cutshttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/14/michael-white-briefing-tuc-unions
As the TUC meets in Manchester, the unions know they must capitalise on a golden chance to win public support for their promised resistance to cuts in services and jobs<p>In our decade of rampant capitalist excess the resumption of class warfare was announced not by Brendan Barber, mild-mannered general secretary of the TUC, but by Warren Buffett. "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning," the world's third richest man once warned fellow Americans. Resumed excess among investment bankers should, together with the coalition government's politically driven programme of high-speed cuts ("dark, brutish and frightening", says Barber), provide the unions' annual congress in Manchester this week with a barn door so big that not even its wildest militants could miss it.</p><p>Yet it is not hard to detect nervousness that the unions will fail yet again to capitalise on a golden chance to win public support for their promised campaign to confront the looming loss of funding, services and jobs. "The issue has to be government cuts, not reckless unions. The last thing we want is to let the government turn it into a rerun of the 80s," explains one Labour MP.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/14/michael-white-briefing-tuc-unions">Continue reading...</a>TUCTrade unionsUniteLiberal-Conservative coalitionPoliticsWarren BuffettMervyn KingBusinessMon, 13 Sep 2010 23:01:39 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/sep/14/michael-white-briefing-tuc-unionsMichael White2010-09-13T23:01:39ZStrike undermines Labour poll hopeshttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/british-airways-strike-general-election
The ancient British art of industrial brinkmanship that is playing out between British Airways and the Unite union causes pre-election heartache for the government<p>The ancient British art of industrial brinkmanship is risky for managements and unions that try to force each other to blink first. For a government impotently seeking to steer both sides towards a deal during an election campaign it is a hiding to nothing.</p><p>No wonder that Gordon Brown and his transport secretary, Lord Adonis, say they don't want BA's Unite union cabin crew to strike today, especially given the fragile state of the airline in a weakened international industry.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/british-airways-strike-general-election">Continue reading...</a>British AirwaysBusinessGeneral election 2010PoliticsAirline industryAir transportWorld newsTransportTrade unionsUK newsUniteSat, 20 Mar 2010 07:05:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/british-airways-strike-general-electionMichael White2010-03-20T07:05:00ZCharlie Whelan's war | Michael White's political briefinghttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/18/charlie-whelan-unite-union
<p>Rare is the Commons health debate where no Labour MP recalls that the Conservatives voted against the bill which set up the NHS in 1948. So it is hardy surprising that David Cameron tried to tingle voters' spines yesterday by claiming that a rampaging Unite union is about to restage the militant 1970s.</p><p>To voters who remember that turbulent decade the comparison seems grotesquely overblown. Cameron was four in 1970 and his tone reminded some Labour MPs of the public school hearties in Oxford bags who helped break the General Strike of 1926.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/18/charlie-whelan-unite-union">Continue reading...</a>LabourTrade unionsConservativesUniteThu, 18 Mar 2010 00:42:30 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/18/charlie-whelan-unite-unionMichael White2010-03-18T00:42:30ZStrikes are back, but unlikely to trouble Gordon Brown | Michael White | Political briefinghttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/strikes-unions-gordon-brown
Unless BA cabin crew and train staff disrupt Easter, union militancy is not expected to affect election chances<p>Strikes are back in the headlines, though rarely on the front pages as they once routinely were. Is Britain heading back to the future – or at least facing a general election in which union militancy is an issue?</p><p>The likely answer is neither, unless the giant Unite union's bumpy negotiations with BA over cabin crew staff ends up ruining Easter air travel plans. Ditto Bob Crow's RMT doing the same for Easter train trips – both just before Gordon Brown goes to Buckingham Palace to seek an election.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/strikes-unions-gordon-brown">Continue reading...</a>Trade unionsGordon BrownGeneral election 2010David CameronLabourConservativesPoliticsUK newsWed, 10 Mar 2010 20:17:29 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/strikes-unions-gordon-brownMichael White2010-03-10T20:17:29ZDelivered into intensive carehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/20/michael-white-political-briefing
<p>Genial Billy Hayes, the posties' leader, is smart enough to know he fell for a sucker punch when tempted by a journalist to suggest that his union's position is stronger than Arthur Scargill's NUM was on the eve of the 1984 miners' strike.</p><p>By that Hayes meant the Communication Workers Union has held a ballot – as the miners' leadership did not – and won a three to one majority on a 67% turnout; 61,623 is also an absolute, if slim, majority of the CWU's 120,000 members.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/20/michael-white-political-briefing">Continue reading...</a>Postal serviceTrade unionsArthur ScargillPoliticsUK newsMon, 19 Oct 2009 23:05:28 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/oct/20/michael-white-political-briefingMichael White2009-10-19T23:05:28ZMichael White: Complications of inequality - Harriet Harman stirs things up on classhttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/sep/11/harrietharman.equality
<p>Harriet Harman went to the TUC in Brighton yesterday and stirred things up on class, not something New Labour often chose to do in its prime. During their political teens Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had seen how crude class rhetoric no longer played well with the Middle Britain voters they were courting. On the equality agenda there were heady distractions on race, gender, sexual orientation and - less raucously - disability.</p><p>So class went out of fashion, but it never went away. As the irreproachably middle class Harman said in her text, prepared but not actually delivered, overarching all the other inequalities is "where you live, your family background, your wealth and social class". Even that mild and self-evident observation was enough to provoke outrage at the Telegraph. </p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/sep/11/harrietharman.equality">Continue reading...</a>Harriet HarmanUK newsTrade unionsLabourSocial exclusionSocietySocial mobilityPoliticsWed, 10 Sep 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/sep/11/harrietharman.equalityMichael White2008-09-10T23:01:00ZMichael White's political briefing: Union discontent, yes: but it's not the 1970shttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/26/tradeunions.media
<p>After threatened autumns, winters and springs of industrial discontent, the tabloids and the unions are joining forces again to threaten Gordon Brown - and the wider public - with a summer of public sector strikes. As ministers call for restraint, the Conservatives and their media allies are promoting fanciful comparisons with the turbulent 1970s.</p><p>That claim is specious for a host of reasons, not least the constricting battery of Thatcherite legal constraints which still curb union militancy. Put another way, 1m working days were lost in 2007 - 250,00 days up on 2006 and the highest figure since the council workers' strike of 2002 doubled the 1990s average of 660,000.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/26/tradeunions.media">Continue reading...</a>Trade unionsPoliticsMediaWed, 25 Jun 2008 23:01:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/26/tradeunions.mediaMichael White2008-06-25T23:01:00Z